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Re: Feeder idea: is there a reason this would NOT work??

Originally Posted by Scrapfe

If you are careful with your hole punching there is nothing wrong with 30 or 40 small holes in you jar lids. As an experiment I once drilled 32 (I think it was) 1/8 inch holes in a quart fruit jar lid, filled the jar with water, and inverted it on my back porch railing (right next to the washing machine) for weeks in the Alabama summer Sun, and it never leaked a drop. The jar that is, not the washing machine.

So why does my quart jar feeder leak like a sieve? And even the 2.5 pint home depot buckets with holes poked in the lid with a high-tech thumbtack, the one with 6 holes, would leak through my hive onto my sticky board. (sure kept my sticky board in business til I changed that)

I have resolved the issue by using a 2.5 pint home depot paint bucket with many holes, sitting in an aluminum pie pan on top of the frames of my super. Leak is contained. But I wanna know why!

Stuck in Texas. Learning Permaculture in drought, guess I will teach permaculture in drought. The bees are still alive.

Re: Feeder idea: is there a reason this would NOT work??

I use 1 gallon ziploc bags. Fill the bags and make sure they are sealed. Put an empty shallow super on top of the top box. Lay the bag on its side right on top of the frames. Take a box cutter and make 3 or 4 slits, 5 or 6 inches long, in the bag. Some syrup will run out and down the frames letting the bees know it is there. Put the inner cover and outer cover on. The bees will take the whole bag quickly with no drowned bees.

Re: Feeder idea: is there a reason this would NOT work??

Originally Posted by Gypsi

So why does my quart jar feeder leak like a sieve?...

Vacuum and surface tension are the forces that keeps the feed in the jar, bucket, paint can, or Boardman feeder. For feeders to leak like a sieve there must be an equal volume of air entering the feeder at all times as there is feed going out. I have had failures with feeders if I damaged the sealing ring inside the lid when making the holes. If the rubber or plastic seal in the bucket or jar is bad or damaged or if you fail to tighten, the lid sufficiently or there is a speck of trash on the sealing surface your feeder will leak like… well like a colander.

Scrapfe---Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.--Otto von Bismarck.